It’s been a while since Dawn left me here alone. Long enough for me to have lost count of the days and nights that I’ve survived here in this world beyond the forest. There are no people here, no houses, no farms, no footpaths through the forest.

I am still alone.

It’s thanks to Dawn that I’m still alive, her memories of scavenging, have helped me to find enough to get by. She lived a simple life, focusing only on what’s most important.

Food, water, and a place to hide from the rain and the cold.

Things that I never had to worry about back home, things that I took for granted. Did mother and father have to worry about these things?

I can’t cry.

I must be strong.

I have to think about these things like a proper adult now.

I’m only sixteen, barely halfway an adult. I’m still too short to reach the top shelves, and too weak to help in the fields.

The plain that I escaped to is terribly small, nestled between hills, that build up into towering mountains of snow and ice. Further up the mountains, fewer and fewer trees grow, until there’s nothing but white.

The wolven stay inside their forest opposite the mountains, but sometimes I’ll see their white pelts among the trees, or their bright blue eyes staring out toward me. Their terrible howls silence the bugs chirping and the birds singing.

Mother always told me that they were evil, cruel, and dangerous, so why haven’t they killed me?

It doesn’t matter.

I can’t face them again.

I don’t want to die.

I can’t go back to the forest, so I stay here in this little area hidden from the rest of the world. A place where the wolven won’t come for me. A place where those violent men won’t chase me.

I hide in the broken side of a hill, fighting away the bugs that compete for space. It’s the only place I could find that would protect me from the rain and the cold. When I’m so numb that I can’t feel my skin anymore, the bugs aren’t quite as scary as they were.

I sink my fingers into the soft earth, pulling myself to my feet as I crawl out from the damp cold of my shelter and toward the creek. I wish my legs would just stay numb, but the pain comes back. I pick off the small bugs that have latched onto me, ugly, scary little things, but my stomach hurts and my head is numb and it’s hard to be scared anymore.

The hills surrounding these small plains wear scars from some great fight long ago, in the red light of sunset, they almost seem to bleed. Craters are scattered about here and there, and the surrounding hills are split as if by some massive sword. My own shelter is another of these scars, one I’m pretty sure won’t collapse on my head.

Small gurgling creeks run down from the mountains bearing fresh water, still freezing cold from the ice and snow. It numbs my mouth to drink it, but it fills my stomach when there’s not enough food.

The edible reeds grow here too, but I’ve already eaten so many of them that there aren’t many left nearby.

With what Dawn has taught me I’ve been able to survive until now, but I’m not sure how much longer I can go on like this. Is no one going to come and save me?

Following the creek down through the plain, eating the berries, reeds, and any other plants that I can gnaw on without stinging my mouth. It has been enough to stave off hunger pains for the last few days, but I never feel full.

Today, it isn’t enough.

I force the reeds down my throat, swallowing it down with cold water from the stream, but a wave of nausea and dizziness forces it all back up.

I remember being sick only the once when I was younger and it was much like this, but different too. Back then I’d had my mother to take care of me, to get me food, to clean the sweat off, to heal the sores, and to hold my hand and sing me lullabies.

I don’t feel like moving. I don’t feel like doing anything, but I have to. If I stop moving, I’m going to die.

After my escape from the wolven, I have been burning my æther non-stop. Small steady streams, never quite enough to burn myself out, but enough to keep me going.

I use it to strengthen my limbs, and right now it’s all that’s keeping me standing, though it can’t stop the trembling in my arms and legs. I breathe in and out, slowly.

One more step.

I need to eat something, only death awaits if I stay still. Dawn knew that well, and I can feel her instincts still with me now.

A drizzling haze of rain falls around me, a veil much like the mist of the forest. I don’t know where I’m walking, I just need to move, and find something to eat. Something to make this pain go away.

A deep growl rolls through the slow storm, prickling my skin and pulling at the hairs on my neck. For a moment, I think it’s just the sky raging at me, but it sounds different, closer. Fighting off waves of dizziness, I look through a twirling landscape I see a large, black cat staring back at me.

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It wants to kill me.

Why does everything here want to kill me?

Steadying myself, I glare at it.

My heart hammers in my chest, but I don’t look away.

Its eyes glow with a bright purple light, but its fur is dark as night and easily sheds the light of the dying sun. White fangs shine crimson, as it emits a deep hungering growl that echoes deep in my chest.

I’ve never heard of this creature before. It matches none of the stories mom and dad would tell me on dark nights.

My hands tremble and my æther flow slips from control, bursting out into my skin and hardening it with strengthening magic just as the cat leaps at me. Before I can even think, I lift my hands up over my face and the darkness throws me to the ground.

Numbness is replaced with pain, my arm crunching in the slobbering cat’s mouth. Teeth sink into my flesh, and large claws dig into my sides. It hurts so much, like my body is on fire.

The beast pulls me up off the ground and tosses me left and right, tearing and ripping at my shoulder.

I scream, punching and slapping at the monster’s head, but it doesn’t feel anything. Blood pours from my arm, and I can feel my æther veins burning out. I run out of breath to scream, and my vision fades away as I stare back into those purple eyes.

Consumed by the æther flow and pulling at instincts stolen from another, I stretch out the fingers on my free hand like they’re claws, and I press the æther stream into them. Wasting every drop of energy into strengthening my hand, I scratch and I claw.

I tear at its face, and at its eyes.

As I draw blood, it lets me go, but Dawn’s instincts push me to continue. I leap at the large cat, swinging my claws.

The cat swats me with a paw, and the world slides out from under me.

I pull my face out of the wet mud that surrounds the creek, and I try to push myself up, but everything hurts, and I can’t move like I want to.

The black cat leaps at me again, its teeth digging into my shoulder.

I scream, thrusting my strengthened hand up into its guts. My arm is dripping with warmth as I struggle, thrashing around and pulling about at its insides. Striking again, and again, and again, before finally, mustering my strength, I swipe across its belly.

Dripping, warm, wet mush flows out over me, and the monster finally lets me go.

With a wet slap, its guts spill to the ground, trailing behind the beast. The cat stumbles a few steps before falling to the dirt, shifting occasionally as it struggles to breathe.

Nearing the point of burning out, I relax the flow of my æther and fall into the dirt just the same as the large cat.

My hands are bloody. My sides too.

It hurts.

It really, really hurts; but I don’t have the energy to scream or to cry.

I shouldn’t cry anyway. I have to be strong.

I can see the bone of my arm. Will this heal on its own? Will I be okay? Am I going to die?

The pain is enough to make me want to curl up and die, but my insistent stomach growls loudly enough to distract me even now. I keel over in a wave of dizziness as my stomach cries out with a new pain. Yet even now the thought of reeds and berries is enough to make me retch.

Desperately I claw my way over to the fallen cat, eventually cradling its head in my lap, I pray that she might know of something to save me.

“Aryll,” I whisper her name as she looks up at me, her life fading away the same as mine, but a little bit faster. Her pretty purple eyes don’t seem hateful, or angry, or even sad. With a small and final huff, she lets go and passes on.

In that moment I press my æther into her, a small hesitant resistance holding me back for just a moment before her life fully fades away. I give the æther in me purpose and call for her to come back.

“Aryll. Please, help me.”

With what little energy that I can spare for her, I can only recover her head and nothing more. Even so, I know I can’t hold on for long.

“Food,” I say.

All she can manage to do is to turn her head and chew slightly. I follow her gaze and look upon the fallen guts that were not moments ago a part of her own flesh.

“Food… That’s… not food.” I whisper, but the thoughts I can feel in her head tell me otherwise. It’s disgusting. It’s wrong, but… there’s nothing else.

Before my veins can burn away and launch me into unconsciousness, I relax the flow into her, and Aryll fades to ash. Only so far as her neck disperses, the rest of her flesh remains as it was in life, only scattered and slowly decaying. The bugs buzzing around are already gathering at the scent of her body.

Dizzy, fighting off the burning in my æther veins, and bleeding from terrible wounds, I can barely even move; yet I must. I wearily fall to my knees by the spilled guts of the black cat.

This… I have to.

I want to live, so I have to.

I want to live. I have to.

Father said not to cry.

I sink my hands into the spilt organs with a viscous squish, the smell of this ‘food’ bringing bile to my mouth. I recall Aryll’s hungry chewing, as if she were telling me that this ‘food’ would be wonderfully sweet.

“Thank you, Aryll. I’m sorry,” I whisper and sink my teeth into her soft flesh.

It’s not sweet.

My body fights itself in contradictory needs. One part demanding that I force down as much ‘food’ as I can, filling a hunger inside of me that the reeds and berries couldn’t. At the same time, the feel of it in my mouth, the taste of it, it’s filthy. Disgusting.

I pause, falling forwards on my hands and trying to breathe, but my chest feels heavy. Water is falling down to the ground.

It’s not tears.

It’s not tears.

I can’t cry.

I force myself to continue, picking up a different part, hoping that it’ll be a little easier to eat, but it struggles the whole way down.

I eat until I’m choking on blood, and my belly is so full that I can’t eat another mouthful.

The rain drizzles overhead, washing over me, but it’s not enough to clear away the blood. Not mine or Aryll’s.

Crawling away from her last remains, I try to find my shelter. The thin rain hanging over me hides my path from me, and the soggy ground clings to me. It’s a struggle to even move, and I can’t even feel most of my body anymore.

I still feel warm from the blood dripping over me.

I can’t…

The hazy world darkens.

I hear a howl somewhere in the distance.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I awaken cold and sticky, I remember fighting, and… eating.

A snort of hot air washes over me and I sit up, kicking myself away from the white, furred monster that’s crawled into my little home.

A wolven.

I shiver, and tremble, meeting its eyes and trying to shout. I can’t. My voice is stuck in my chest.

Even as I cower, it stands up and walks closer to me, sniffing at my hair. I feel a wet tongue lashing at me, and looking up, I see a massive spider crunch in the wolven’s pale teeth.

It snuffles around me again, picking at the bugs that crawl on me before turning around and sitting at the edge of the broken concave shelter cut into the hill. It’s only a few paces away from me, but it doesn’t seem to care anymore.

I… I’m alive.

Or am I?

My arms are whole again, smaller, weaker, but not bleeding anymore. My sides are still sore, but it’s not as bad as it was.

I hold my hand to my chest and, breathing slowly, I try and feel for my heart.

It still beats.

I’m still alive.

“You… healed me…? Saved me?” The wolven turns to me, its icy blue eyes shine with strange thoughts. It turns away from me again, with a small snort.

A small hunk of meat sits inside, closer to me, but protected by the wolven who viciously slaughters the bugs that crawl too close to it. I fall back to the ground, and I hide away in the darkness of dreams.